


The Bartons' Farm for Troublesome Youngsters

by Yevynaea



Series: a family can be some asgardians, sixteen demigods, and their friends (Lokids AU) [4]
Category: Baby Driver (2017), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Clint Barton's Farm, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Deaf Clint Barton, Family, Gen, Healing, Magic, Multi, One Shot, Post-Canon, Redemption, Sign Language, Song Lyrics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 16:27:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16245473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yevynaea/pseuds/Yevynaea
Summary: “I have friends in interesting places; I asked for some favors,” Debora says, and Baby is surprised. He thought of her as normal, someone outside the world he knew before, someone unconnected to crime and unconcerned with the kind of debts she's talking about now. “Joe's safe, he has a live-in nurse now, I know her, she's great. Come on, I know a place we can go.”Baby doesn't argue, hopping into the car-- Debora drives, and he listens… to the road, to the world, to the music, to her.Or: Baby's release and the aftermath, crossover edition.





	The Bartons' Farm for Troublesome Youngsters

**Author's Note:**

> Relevant Baby Driver AU notes: Baby has magic, Buddy and Darling are alive, obviously, and Debora is the daughter of one of Marvel's actual-honest-to-god deities (Eternity) and that's why she was so blase and down to roll with all the madness of the BD climax.  
> Relevant Marvel AU notes are in the series description but honestly I think most of this makes sense without it since it's just centered on Baby.

Baby is in prison for approximately seven weeks. At the end of seven weeks, he’s told that “someone pulled some strings,” by the prison warden, who seems deeply unhappy about it. Then he's given back his clothes, and he's released. Debora is waiting for him, outside, with a car and a pair of shades and a new iPod for him, and a pleased grin on her face. He puts one earbud in, hits shuffle, and cranks the music until he can hear it past the silence and over the ringing.  _ Blame It On The Girls  _ by MIKA plays.

“I have friends in interesting places; I asked for some favors,” Debora says, and Baby is surprised. He thought of her as normal, someone outside the world he knew before, someone unconnected to crime and unconcerned with the kind of debts she's talking about now. “Joe's safe, he has a live-in nurse now, I know her, she's great. Come on, I know a place we can go.”

Baby doesn't argue, hopping into the car-- Debora drives, and he listens… to the road, to the world, to the music, to her.

  
  


They drive longer than he thought they would. They stop and stay overnight in a hotel, a  _ nice _ hotel, and the name Debora gives to the man at the front desk isn't a name Baby knows.

They lay in different beds, across the room. Thoughts and theories come to him, fears, ideas that Debora isn't who she said, isn't who she seemed.

“I never lied to you,” she says through the dark, as if reading his mind. “I just left some things out. You can't say you didn't do the same.”

_ Fair enough _ , Baby thinks. He pulls one earbud out.

“Tell me,” he says, half a question and half a request, and in the hall, someone pounds on another door, in time with the drumbeat of  _ Youth _ by Daughter.

“My dad knows a lot of powerful people. I'm friends with some of them,” she begins. “It's really not as bad as you're probably imagining.”

  
  


Baby's still confused, when they reach their destination. Deb tried to explain, at least some, but Baby hadn't processed enough for it to make sense. Something about her dad working with the Avengers, in New York, and something about demigods, and something about cousins, and something about a rich guy named Wren-- or maybe Crane? So he's still puzzling over it all, when they arrive at what Deb keeps referring to just as  _ the farm _ .

And it certainly is that. No city sounds, no other houses in sight, only trees and fields and the house at the center of it all.

_Far away from all the trouble, I had caused with my two hands,_ goes the music in Baby's ear. A man comes out of the house.

“Debbie!” the man greets cheerfully.

“Clint,” Debora replies, just as happy but half as energetic.

“You brought your friend,” Clint notes. “Any more and I'll need to make a sign: Barton’s Farm for Troublesome Youngsters.”

“Shouldn't that be ‘ _ troubled  _ youngsters,’ Clint?” a new voice calls, and Baby looks up, finding its source on the roof. A boy a little younger than Baby is up there, repainting around the upper-level windows, by the looks of it.

“Peter, have you  _ met _ you?” Clint replies dryly. While the boy is sputtering for a response, Clint approaches the car, holding a hand out that Baby belatedly realizes is meant for him to shake. “So, you prefer Miles or Baby?”

“Baby's fine,” Baby says quietly.

“Why don't we go in, and I can introduce you to everyone,” Clint says, heading back toward the house, and Debora and Baby follow. “I don't s’pose Deb’s told you anything about this place yet?”

“Uh, not really, no,” Baby admits. Debora only smiles when Clint sends a glare her way.

“‘Course not,” Clint says. “Oh, wait.”

Before heading inside, he turns, brushes past them, and stands at the edge of the porch.

“He's about to yell,” Deb warns, just in time.

“LUNCH!” Clint yells, at the top of his lungs, and from multiple points out of sight, whoops and affirmations come in return. Clint turns again toward the door. “Okay, let's go.”

  
  


Baby meets everyone when they come in for lunch. It's overwhelming, at first, to have so many eyes on him, but they're quickly distracted by the food being handed out. He runs through the names again in his head, making sure he's got everyone down. Laura, Clint's wife. Natasha, Clint  _ and _ Laura's wife. Lila and Cooper and tiny Nathaniel, their kids. Peter, Natasha’s brother. MJ, one of Peter's partners. Jamie, Natasha and Peter's cousin. Kate, Clint’s protégé, although what that actually  _ means _ , Baby has no clue.

“You okay?” Debora asks. He nods. She smiles, leaning her head against his shoulder.

_ Bit by bit, _

_ I'm gonna build my house in the wildest thickets…  _

“So,” Laura says, handing a plate to Baby and smiling at his muttered thank you. “Here's the deal. We give the kids work, when they're not in school, because otherwise they find too much trouble to get into. The farm is quiet except for us, isolated, but not in a depressing way, so it's a nice place to recover after something crazy happens to you, learn how to be a whole person again and not just what someone else made you be.”

“I've gotten through many a depression spiral here,” Clint chimes his agreement, signing the same sentiment as he speaks.

_ No, I won't bring too much of anything…  _

“He has,” Laura confirms. “Anyway, we pay mainly in food and lodgings, you can listen to music while you work, and if you hate doing something we can set you up doing a different job so you don't have to do the stuff you hate. That all sound good?”

Baby isn't sure how to respond to  _ anything _ going on here, but he nods, because it really does sound alright.

  
  


_ “You didn't tell us about the magic,” _ Clint signs, on Baby's sixth day on the farm, and Debora picks innocently at a thread on her jacket sleeve.

“I wanted to see how long it’d take you to figure out,” she says honestly.

_ “How long did it take you?” _

“Our first date,” she says. “Well, kind of a date. We hung out at the laundromat, and the washers switched speeds every time the song changed.”

“The kids have started testing it,” Clint informs her aloud.

“I figured they might.” Deb smiles.

  
  


“You know how to drive a tractor?”

Baby looks up at the question, caught a little off-guard by Natasha’s sudden appearance at his side.

“No,” he says.

“I'll teach you,” she says and signs, dropping her armful of firewood into the pile to be cut. “Someone else competent needs to learn it before Clint and I go back to New York.”

“What about Debora?” Baby asks. “She's competent.”

“Competent, yes. Frighteningly so. Willing to drive a tractor? Not so much.” Natasha pats him on the shoulder. “We'll start after lunch.”

  
  


“Do you like to drive?” Clint asks, on morning twenty-four of Baby's stay on the farm.

“I'm good at it,” Baby says.

“Not an answer, kid. Do you  _ like  _ it? If you do, I might have you drive me into town today.”

“How far above the speed limit can I go?” Baby asks.

“Nine, the cops in this county are lax.”

“Okay,” Baby says, and Clint grins, tossing him the keys.

“You can pick the music.”

They drive to town at fourteen miles above the limit, only slowing once, when Clint points out a cop ahead on the side of the road.

_ Always searching for a notion that resembled a hope _ _   
_ _ That I was standing on the verge of something good, I don’t know… _

“You can park in the middle of town,” Clint directs, when they arrive. “I gotta run in a few places. You wanna come, or wait here?”

Baby shrugs, but when Clint gets out, Baby follows, locking the car behind them. The library’s first, picking up the books everyone's put on hold. Then a gardening store, for a replacement trowel after Jamie finally managed to bury his somewhere Laura couldn't find it. Then the post office, and Baby pretends not to be nervous, pretends not to have memories of that last ill-fated heist flashing behind his eyes-- but they aren't there for long. Clint grabs a pile of things out of a PO box, and they leave. Nothing bad happens. Baby breathes a sigh of relief.

“I'll drive us back,” Clint says, handing off the pile of mail to Baby as they reach the car. “One of those is for you.”

Baby gets into the car and settles the pile on his lap before looking through it. There's a box, fairly small, with Joseph's handwriting on the address label. Inside is a new phone, video calls already enabled and Joe's number listed in the contacts. Baby also finds a few of his tapes, including the one of his mom, four of his iPods, and two old favorite pairs of sunglasses.

“I have a tape player in the garage somewhere,” Clint says.

“Thanks,” Baby replies.

“No problem.” 

A new song starts, upbeat electric guitar and drums filling the car, and Clint glances toward the radio, then at Baby. Then at the radio again. Then he checks all his mirrors, and even cranes forward a little to see above the car.

“What is it?” Baby asks, suddenly on edge.

“We're on an empty stretch, there's nothing here for the beat to--” Clint is interrupted by the beat hitting, and the car violently hitting a pothole the same moment, jolting both of them. When Clint recovers, he sighs. “Aw, car.” Then he glances at Baby again. “So do you have any control over that, or…?”

“What?” Baby asks.

“The music,” Clint says.

“What about it?”

“You're kidding.”

Baby, uncomfortable, gives a helpless shrug.

“Oh my god, kid,” Clint says. This time, when the song builds up to another heavy beat, Clint is ready, swerving them around the pothole-- though a book sliding off the backseat against the car door makes enough of a noise to work instead. “The world  _ bends over backwards _ around you to be in sync with your music, Baby. You really hadn't noticed?”

“I--” Baby thinks about it.  _ Really _ thinks about it. “Oh. I guess I just thought it was… normal.”

“Not normal,” Clint says. “Not bad! But definitely not normal.”

“Oh,” Baby says again.

“You should try controlling it,” Clint says. “See if you can make specific things happen. Might be fun.”

  
  


People cycle through, coming and going. A couple of Natasha and Peter’s other siblings visit. Jamie’s little sister Sophie shows up once, for a weekend, before they both go home. Kate, MJ, and Peter all come and go. It's easy, to fall into the routine of life here, to get used to the isolation, the chores, the loud, warm family dinners. He vid calls Joe every day or two, helps Laura teach the others ASL when Clint is in New York City. He drives the tractor. He lets MJ “run tests” on his… powers, which mostly entails sharing earbuds and throwing things into the air to see if they hit the ground on beat. They all do.

Deb and Baby have been at the Bartons’ farm for just over two months when Darling and Buddy show up. Baby hasn't seen them since the last heist, since Darling got shot and Buddy saw red, since they barely escaped the cops, since Baby and Debora barely escaped Buddy’s wrath because Darling just barely survived, since Doc’s crooked cops had come for vengeance on all of them, since Baby's arrest.

_ Young blood, came to start a riot, _ _   
_ _ Don't care what your old man say… _

“Everyone inside,” Laura orders, voice hard, when she sees the car coming up the long driveway, fast and unidentified and uninvited. They're all eating lunch on the porch, but jump up at Laura’s tone, plates abandoned. “MJ, Deb, Baby, get all the kids into their room and stay there with them. Kate, Peter, I want you both suited up. Wait for my word.”

MJ leads Lila and Cooper into the house, and the others follow, Baby at the back of the line, but he looks back before going inside, looking past Laura to the car now close enough to see the driver inside-- and he freezes. Buddy and Darling were horribly injured, last Baby saw, but they seem recovered now, or at least, recovered enough.

The music in Baby's ears is too loud and not loud enough, as the sleek black car pulls up in front of the farmhouse. As the couple step out of it, slamming the doors behind them.

_ Somebody gotta, gotta raise a little hell. _

“I know them,” Baby says, as Laura pulls a shotgun from where it was affixed to the bottom of a patio bench.

_ Young blood, gotta pull the trigger, _

_ When the whole world runnin’ scared… _

“In what sense?” Laura asks.

“Coworkers,” Baby answers. Laura cocks the shotgun.

“Get inside, Baby,” she orders.

“No no no,” Buddy calls out, hands up in surrender, “we just wanna talk to the kid. Isn't that right, Darling?”

_ Somebody gotta, gotta raise a little hell... _

“We won't hurt nobody,” Darling agrees, popping her gum. “We just have a question for Baby.”

“And what might that be?” Laura asks.

“Why he screwed up our last job,” Buddy says.

“Why he screwed everyone over and then just got to walk away clean.”

“Looks like you got to walk away, too,” Laura says. “I'd call that a victory, and leave it there.”

Buddy looks like he's about to argue, but Darling puts a hand on his arm.

“And who are  _ you _ ?” she asks. “What the hell is this place?”

“It's my farm, on which you are trespassing,” Laura says flatly.

“So, what, you help Baby get out of jail, and now he owes you? Is that it?” Buddy sounds mad, and Baby flinches reflexively, but Laura hesitates, lowering her gun just slightly.

_ Baby fare thee well… _

“Of course not,” she says. “He just needed to get out of Atlanta. Find somewhere to get his head put back together.”

“Right out from under Doc’s thumb and under another one,” Darling says dismissively, and Buddy hums his agreement. Baby frowns. Are they…  _ worried  _ about him? After  _ everything _ they did?

Apparently the answer is yes, because as the song fades and changes, Darling steps closer to the porch, hands still held up in plain view.

_ With my family on the right hand side, _

_ And your family on the left…  _

“Baby, are you here because you wanna be here?” she asks. He nods, vehemently. The porch creaks behind him-- he glances, and there's Debora, slipping her hand into his, standing beside him. He squeezes her hand gratefully. Buddy and Darling, watching them, both soften a little, Buddy looking a little less tense, Darling almost smiling.

_ But in the evening I'm heavy now, _ _   
_ _ Try as I might, I just can't keep it steady now…  _

“He's here because he needed to get away from  _ you _ ,” Debora says, and Buddy at least has the grace to wince.

“I think you should go,” Laura reiterates.

  
  


They're back the next week. And the next, and the next. Eventually, Laura actually lets them into the house, gives them little jobs to do around the farm. They largely don't do what they're told, but they keep coming back, and they just… talk. First they apologize, properly, for everything, at Debora’s quiet but intense insistence. Then they tell Baby about where they've been while they waited for things to calm a little, hotels and beaches and a ski resort in the Rockies somewhere.

By the time the seasons change and the holidays approach, almost everyone has left the farm, except for Kate, Deb, and Baby. Clint and Natasha are home, but don't know for how long. Buddy has resigned himself to doing the work Laura assigns him, which nowadays is mostly shovelling snow. Darling still refuses to do anything anyone tells her.

“You found yourself good people,” she says to Baby, one day, as they're sitting on the porch, bundled up and drinking hot cocoa, amusedly watching Kate and Natasha try to draw Buddy into a snowball fight. (Or maybe they're just throwing ice at him for the hell of it. Baby isn't sure yet.) “I'm glad you got out, kid. If any of us ever deserved better, it’s you.”

_ Peel the scars from off my back, _ _   
_ _ I don't need them anymore…  _

Got out of Atlanta, got out of the world Doc had made him a part of, got out of Doc's debt, got out of driving (except to town and back, of course), got out of prison… he doesn't know exactly which of these Darling means, if not all. But it doesn't matter.

“So am I,” he replies.

_ I've come home…  _


End file.
